


the devil's in the details

by bakerloo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Stiles is Stiles, derek is a grumpy potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27459301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakerloo/pseuds/bakerloo
Summary: “Now, Der-bear, don’t be rude,” Laura says.Stiles looks up and grins, his tongue slipping through his teeth. “Yeah, Der-bear,” he says, eyes twinkling. “Don’t be rude.”Derek sneers at him, and Laura bursts out laughing. “Oh, I think I’m going to like you,” she says. “Stiles, you say? I’m Laura, Derek’s sister. It’s simply wonderful to meet you. I trust that you’re taking care of my brother.”“Definitely,” Stiles says. “I brighten his day with the products of my exploited, unpaid child labour.”Laura gives Derek an admonishing look. Unpaid child labour is her Achilles heel. “Derek, this poor boy,” she says, and sweeps Stiles into her arms. Over her shoulder, Stiles winks at him, and then his eyes widen as he accidentally gets green paint on the back of Laura’s blazer.Unfortunately, from that moment on Stiles and Laura are as thick as thieves. Derek just ends up with a dumbass green cat.or, in which Derek is a passive-aggressive potter who makes plates, Scott is his newest hire and the one thing Derek hates more than Scott is Scott’s best friend.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 20
Kudos: 388





	the devil's in the details

**Author's Note:**

> title from peace by taylor swift

Three weeks ago, Laura hired Scott McCall for the store.

She’d done it on what she likes to call “intuition” and what Derek likes to call “a resolve of putty”. She’s always had an affinity for helpless, pathetic-looking creatures with big shiny eyes, and as soon as Scott McCall tripped almost ass over tit through the doorway with a resumé boasting zero retail experience and the look of a dishevelled homeless dog, Derek had internally let out a groan of despair. _Surely not_ , he’d thought, and then Scott had beamed at them with eyes like fucking saucers and Laura’s face did that thing whenever she was around new-born babies, or birds with broken wings.

The entire point of their store is Derek moulds and glazes the plates and mugs and the Beacon Hills aristocrat, or what sensibility of an aristocrat can exist in Beacon Hills, spend too much money on them. Somehow, it works. They make money because Derek is surly and tortured and scowls at the customers and his pottery is usually kind of misshapen, and apparently the entire combination has somehow deluded their customers into believing they’re buying the by-product of his man pain.

They were making good money. They didn’t need an employee.

Laura disagreed, and three weeks ago Scott had shown up for his first day of work with an attitude so chipper it could probably power a fucking carnival.

(On an unrelated note, three weeks ago Derek also started drinking again.)

He’s just useless, is the thing. For one, he doesn’t know a teapot from a fucking bowl. When Derek had interrogated Laura about his credentials, she had just waved him off, which means she hired him on account of his dopey grin, and it shows. He doesn’t know a vase from a jar, and if he weren’t so charming Derek’s pretty sure he would have scared off half the clientele, because whenever someone asks, “What’s this piece?” he’ll probably just shrug and beam and say, “I don’t know, but I can guarantee Derek made it in the depths of depression!” (Laura grilled him on what the wealthy cougars liked to hear.)

What’s more, within the first three hours of his first shift, he had accidentally broken two pieces, and also somehow burnt his hand. Derek was at the firing oven all day and Scott had come nowhere _close_.

“He’s a _hazard_ ,” Derek growls to her.

“What he is is a sweet boy in need of some money,” Laura corrects sternly. In the background, Scott gesticulates too enthusiastically at a customer and sweeps an entire row of plates off a shelf and crashing to the floor.

Secondly, he is fucking _everywhere_. According to his transcript, he’s currently studying veterinary science at the college half an hour away – so how he ended up working at a pottery store is a little beyond Derek – but for some reason he seems to have taken it upon him to become a potter (because clearly there are transferable skills). To Derek’s dismay, the next morning Scott bursts into his workshop at the back of the store and says, “Derek, I am your apprentice!”

“Please don’t feel obliged,” Derek says. If Scott is a nightmare on the shop floor Derek doesn’t want to even begin to entertain the realm of possibility of him in the vicinity of a workspace involving a lot of heavy, breakable materials and a firing oven.

Through the door, Laura gives him Significant Eyes.

“Oh, it’s no problem!” Scott says, like he’s the one granting Derek a favour, and accidentally steps on a teapot lid. “I think I may be pretty good at this.”

Predictably, Scott’s vase ends up looking like a lopsided mealworm, and that’s after the first three attempts in which the first two caved in and the third got thrown out when he accidentally got his fist stuck in it and couldn’t stop the potter’s wheel. Derek stares down at all the wasted clay and wonders how his life came to this.

Scott’s kind of proud of his mealworm, anyway, and once it’s been glazed and fired he shows it to Laura.

“I love it,” Laura says. “Very chic.”

Derek stares at her. Scott beams and says, “Thanks! Derek really helped me. I think I’ve found a new passion.”

“Really,” Derek says. Laura puts the mealworm on display in the window and every time Derek walks through the door he has very vivid fantasies about throwing it on the ground and shattering it.

However, that isn’t even the worst part.

No.

The worst part is Scott’s best friend.

The first time Derek meets him is the day after the mealworm gets put in the window. He spends most of the morning locked away in his workshop passive-aggressively painting plates in recovery – he has never been exactly the _customer service_ , that’s reserved for Laura, but after prolonged contact with Scott he feels like he needs to be alone for the next three days. Besides, as much space between him and the fucking mealworm is probably preferable, if Laura doesn’t want it broken on the ground.

He is just finishing the rim of a bowl when from outside his workshop he hears Scott’s voice.

“...and it’s actually an art, you know, like a really complicated art, but I think I’m getting it. Laura even put my vase in the window!”

Derek swore to himself he would not put himself in direct line of conversation with Scott willingly ever again, but this feels like something he needs to nip in the bud as fast as possible before Scott starts gets encouraged. He looks up towards the door as it slides open – but then his words effectively die on his tongue when he catches sight of Scott’s friend.

He’s standing next to Scott, hands in his pockets, tall and lean and lithe. His red hoodie and jeans practically swallow his frame, but the flashes of skin that aren’t being concealed give hint to what the rest of him looks like – the cut of his jaw, the jut of his wrists, the length of his fingers and the way they never stop moving, the way he tongues his lower lip. He’s got a buzzed head and huge amber eyes and vibrates like he’s just done thirteen energy shots and Derek suddenly loses feeling in his hands.

Scott is oblivious. “And this is Derek,” he says, like he’s giving a tour of a zoo and Derek is a surly exhibit. “He’s kind of my boss. Laura is my real boss but she does all the selling stuff, Derek is the one doing all the work. He helped me make my vase. Derek, this is my best friend Stiles.”

Derek says, “Scott, you can’t bring friends back here,” and tries not to look like he’s dying. Stiles. That’s a fucking stupid name. Why can’t he breathe?

“Oh, that’s okay,” Scott says. “Stiles is like my brother. I wanted to show him around.”

“That’s not,” Derek starts, but Scott’s already dragging Stiles around.

“See, these are all the things he’s made,” he’s saying, and Stiles is nodding, and Derek has to forcibly drag his eyes away from the length of his neck. “Isn’t it so cool? Derek’s really good at this. You should see what I make, though. It’s not as good as Derek’s but it’s close, right, Derek?”

Derek does not respond. Stiles’s wide pink mouth tugs a little.

“Can I show Stiles how to make a vase?” Scott asks.

“No,” Derek says.

“But—”

Stiles says to Scott, “Dude, maybe you shouldn’t provoke your murder-brows boss” and Derek hates that that’s the first thing he says, so he says, “Murder-brows?”

“Yeah, man,” Stiles says. He brings his fingers up above his eyes and curves his fingers. “Like, you’re about to rip our throats out with your teeth. Must bring in a lot of customers.”

“It actually does,” Scott says loyally. “Derek makes his pieces in the depths of depression.” Then he winks at Derek, and Derek grimaces because Laura really needs to stop.

“Maybe it’s because you’re in my workshop,” he says instead. “Scott’s not even really allowed to be here.”

“You love me being here,” Scott says, and accidentally steps on a mug.

“Scott,” Derek says.

“Yeah, we’re going,” Stiles says, and grabs Scott’s arm. “Come on, dude, I don’t want to be mauled to death by your nerdy potter boss.”

They both leave. As they leave, Derek hears Scott say, “Look, there’s my vase!”

“It sort of looks like a mealworm,” Stiles says. Derek nearly breaks the plate in his hands.

*

Unfortunately, Stiles kind of becomes a permanent fixture after that.

He’s around almost as much as Scott is, which is an issue because while Scott’s only redeeming quality is his dopey smile, he’s getting paid, so at least he tries. Stiles, on the other hand, has no real reason for loitering, other than an innate need to be a little shit, and because Derek can’t get him to behave by threatening to dock his pay he just does what he jolly well wants.

It’s not like he’s even got Laura in his corner on this one, either. Derek had managed to keep the two of them separated for as long as he could, because Stiles is the exact sort of creature she would collect like a Pokémon card into her group of strays, and Stiles does _not_ need any more enabling. If Scott is like a stray puppy, Stiles is more like an alley cat, slinking around the store and trailing his longer, clever fingers over the shelves, flicking at the ceramics and trying to find the tune to Mary Had A Little Lamb. (Laura likes them scruffy and annoying.)

Derek tries to rearrange their schedules as much as possible so they won’t clash, and whenever Scott brings him up in front of her he pretends not to know what he’s talking about, but his luck is never that good.

Like a terrible-timed whirlwind of designer shoes, she one day flits in as Scott is distracted helping a customer and Stiles is lounging on the counter painting a ceramic cat, and Derek begrudgingly catches the exact moment she falls in love.

“Well, _hello_ ,” she says significantly, in that way of hers, “and who are you?”

“That’s Stiles!” Scott says rather proudly, forgetting he’s in the middle of a conversation with a customer. “He’s my best friend.”

“Focus, Scott,” Derek says tightly. He’s watching Stiles like a hawk – a lady had commissioned him to have that cat finished by this afternoon and Stiles had used his distracting mouth to manipulate Derek into letting him paint it. If he ruins it Derek will ruin _him_ , because for a tiny ceramic cat the amount of money she had offered was obscene. “Stiles, you too.”

“Now, Der-bear, don’t be rude,” Laura says.

Stiles looks up and grins, his tongue slipping through his teeth. “Yeah, Der-bear,” he says, eyes twinkling. “Don’t be rude.”

Derek sneers at him, and Laura bursts out laughing. “Oh, I think I’m going to like you,” she says. “Stiles, you say? I’m Laura, Derek’s sister. It’s simply wonderful to meet you. I trust that you’re taking care of my brother.”

“Definitely,” Stiles says. “I brighten his day with the products of my exploited, unpaid child labour.”

Laura gives Derek an admonishing look. _Unpaid child labour_ is her Achilles heel. “Derek, this _poor boy_ ,” she says, and sweeps Stiles into her arms. Over her shoulder, Stiles winks at him, and then his eyes widen as he accidentally gets green paint on the back of Laura’s blazer.

Unfortunately, from that moment on Stiles and Laura are as thick as thieves. Derek just ends up with a dumbass green cat.

It gets to the point where Derek actually has to consider hiring him, just so he’ll stop being such a nuisance. And even that goes terribly.

“Stiles,” Derek says one day. “I need to ask you something.”

“Sure, dude!” Stiles says, head buried in the till. “What’s up?”

“Do you want to work here?”

Stiles’s head hits the cash machine, and hundreds of pennies scatter across the floor. “ _What_?”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek half-shouts, immediately distracted, and they both drop to their knees and try and rescue as many as they can before they roll, forever irretrievable, under the counter, and Stiles says, “Well, you should clean the machine!” which makes so little sense Derek actually throws the handful of pennies he has at him, and then there’s another grapple half a second later when he realises how terrible of an idea that was, and the question and consequently Stiles’s placement in the store is dropped.

“Hey, bro,” Stiles says, the next day. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Don’t call me bro,” Derek says immediately, and then his gaze falls down to the ominous black sack Stiles has got in his fist. “What is that.”

“Compensation,” Stiles says.

The bag clucks. Derek’s eyes widen. “Stiles.”

“This is Bess,” Stiles says, oblivious, upending the sack on the counter, and an honest-to-god chicken comes out of it. “My dad arrested a farmer yesterday for running a meth lab, and because he was so crazy he totally didn’t look after any of the animals, so there are a bunch of half-starved animals they need to take care of. So, I brought her here as an apology!”

“Stiles,” Derek says, carefully, in case Stiles has recently undergone head trauma, “that’s a chicken.”

“I thought about bringing the goat,” Stiles continues. “Or the pig. I felt like you could have really done with an adorable pink piglet running around, but then I thought practically. What can a chicken do that that doesn’t require eating it. Lay eggs, obvs, and since you’re built like Gaston I felt like you maybe have pulled a Rocky in your time and swallowed a few eggs raw. Or you can cook them, like normal people.”

Derek just stares at the chicken. It clucks a few times, experimentally pecking against the top of the counter, and then lifts its head and stares Derek straight in the eyes. Derek isn’t incredibly knowledgeable on the emotional range of a chicken, but he feels quite stared down.

“Stiles,” he says again.

Stiles is looking between them nervously. “Do you like her?”

“Uh,” Derek says. The chicken clucks, and then steps towards him. Instinctively, he steps backwards.

“Oh, don’t be scared,” Stiles says, understanding in his eyes, like he thinks the reason Derek is so hesitant is because he’s got a weird phobia of farm animals and not because he’s just brought a fucking chicken into his pottery store. “Bess is a sweetiepie, aren’t you, baby?” He picks her up and smushes her against his chest, and she almost starts purring, like a cat, allowing him to stroke the down of her feathers of her neck. “See! She loves cuddles. Do you want some Derek snuggles, Bessie-boo?”

Too late, Derek realises what’s happening. “Oh, no, that’s—”

“Here,” Stiles says graciously, and deposits the chicken into his arms. Derek is as tense as a live wire. Bess stares at him contemplatively. “See? Isn’t she _beautiful_? I think she’s found a really good home here.”

Derek just stares down at her. Bess stares back.

“Do you like her?” Stiles prods.

Bess clucks at him, almost disapprovingly.

“Yes,” he says, automatically.

Stiles’s face splits into a grin, and Derek’s heart does a backflip. “Awesome!” he says. “Does this mean I’m forgiven for yesterday?”

“Uh, yeah,” Derek says. He’s never been so thrown. He’s holding a _chicken_. “You—yeah.”

Stiles noticeably deflates in relief. “Oh, thank fuck. Honestly, dude, I thought you were going to kill me right then and there. I really didn’t mean to spill all those coins on the floor. I was just cleaning the till because—well, I heard you complaining to Laura about how it always jams, so—I thought if I scrubbed it down a little bit—”

“Wait,” Derek interrupts. “You—cleaned the cash machine because you heard me complaining about it?”

Stiles’s eyes go wide as plates. “Uh,” he says. His ears are scarlet. “Yes?”

Derek stares at him, and then looks down at Bess in his arms. He doesn’t understand him even _slightly_. “Thank you.”

“It’s no big, honestly.” He laughs a little, and it sounds kind of forced, like he’s trying to lift the sudden tension, but it works, and Derek can see his shoulders ease. “I mean, you should consider yourself lucky. I don’t think that thing had been cleaned in three hundred years. Honestly, dude, invest in some hygiene.”

“Don’t call me dude,” Derek says, but there’s something swelling in his chest that he hasn’t felt in a really long time. Before he can dwell on it Stiles says hopefully, “So, does this mean I can use your workshop now?” and Derek says, “You’ll never be allowed to use my workshop” and Stiles huffs and says, “Ye of little faith” and then slips on a stray receipt and nearly takes out a shelf of teapots.

Point is, Stiles is a pain in the ass, but he’s also under his skin in ways Derek just can’t shake. He’s never really felt like this towards another person – not even with Kate. Kate was suffocating, even when he fancied himself in love. She was everywhere, like a fog, and sometimes he was scared with her, because he’d get too deep in it and couldn’t find a way out, but Stiles: he just settles around him like a blanket, swinging his legs from the counter, existing in all the little cracks that Kate left behind. It’s terrifying, to say the least.

It reminds him of this one piece he was commissioned to make. A client, not unlike all the others, had approached him and asked him to make a fruit bowl, something “exquisite” (she’d given him a Significant Look when she said this, which he had learnt to interpret as “I want your man pain in a piece of ceramic” and not for the first time Derek had wondered how this had become his legacy), and so he had. He had stayed in his workshop after hours sculpting her a beautiful bowl, something big and spacious, something beautiful, and he’d painted it blue and green like the sea, but when he’d taken it out of the kiln it had slipped and he’d dropped it and it had shattered on the floor.

He could have just made another one. But something stopped him and he’d picked up every last shard off the floor and slowly pieced them together with gold glue until it was fully formed once again with a thin golden spiderweb skittering across the surface.

The customer had loved it, anyway, and paid him a lot. She probably thought it was a deep intrinsic look into the depths of his tortured soul, and he let her, because it meant she’d paid extra. But it’s just—he feels that’s how Stiles is to him. Filling in all the little gaps Kate left behind, creating something new and beautiful. Something exquisite.

It’s really, really terrifying. Especially since the last place he expected to find something like this was in his worst employee’s daffy best friend.

He tries to tell Laura, a few times. But he’s not good with words, especially words to describe Stiles, or how he’s feeling about Stiles, because Stiles is so many different words at once, and how he feels is so unlike anything he’s ever felt before, that when he tries they just get stuck in his throat.

But Laura knows. She’s Laura.

She just smiles at him. “We’ll invite him to dinner,” she says. “Scott, too. They’re good boys. I like them.”

“But...” Derek frowns. How does she not understand?

“I know,” she says. “You think I wouldn’t?”

Derek just kind of shrugs, scowling.

“Derek,” she says. “We’ve got a chicken. Of course I know.”

And Derek looks down at Bess on the shop floor, who’s happily roosting in an old sweatshirt he keeps under the counter and pecking at the strings of the hood, and thinks, _oh_.

“Scott’s Hispanic, right?” Laura continues. “I could make tacos, or something.”

*

Dinner goes well. Stiles says, “I thought you lived in a cave” and “You have _throw pillows_!” and Scott treks mud into the kitchen and spills guacamole all over the floor when he brings the bowl to the table. Laura laughs delightedly when Stiles asks to see Derek’s room to confirm if he really does sleep in a coffin, and Scott excitedly says, “Like Dracula!” like that wasn’t already implied.

“No,” Derek says, and, “I’m not a vampire, Stiles.”

Stiles just ominously taps his nose and shoves a mouthful of black beans into his mouth.

The night ends with Scott offering to put the plates in the dishwasher and accidentally dropping them and spilling rice across the kitchen floor. Exasperated, Derek says, “Scott” and Laura laughs so hard he can see her fillings. Bess eats the rice off the floor.

Across the room, Stiles grins at him, happy and sated and sprawled on his sofa, feet on his throw pillows. Derek feels his face soften, and smiles back.

*

It’s been a quiet day today: it’s Scott’s shift off, so the shop floor is unusually subdued. Derek is loathe to admit it, but he’s become used to Scott’s never-ending mindless chatter as background noise, and having the store be silent other than the creak of floorboards and quiet murmur between customers feels lonely. Usually Stiles would still pop around, even if for a few moments, to mess around with the till or give Bess a cuddle, but he’d somehow gotten hold of the business email address and sent in a long convoluted email that morning explaining that he had midterms and would be MIA for the next while, and for Derek not to miss him too much and _try for a smile, Sourwolf! Brightens the whole face_. It had been more endearing than Derek cared to admit. He hadn’t deleted it.

Either way, it’s passed in relative peace, and by the time closing time arrives Derek’s been so caught up in his workshop he doesn’t even realise. Laura stays for an hour or two more doing inventory on the computer, but then even she leaves, with a shoulder squeeze and a gentle, “Don’t be too late, Der.” But Derek likes staying late: in the daytime he’s never really fully immersed in his craft, always with one ear out for anything breaking or any particularly demanding customers who are immune to Scott’s puppy eyes. At night it’s just him, and he can just sit there in silence making his ceramics, and it’s therapeutic in a way he doesn’t think anything else really is. Bess is asleep in the hoodie in the corner of the room, and the only sound is the slick of his hands against the clay on the wheel.

It must be just past ten when he hears the gentle snick of the lock of the front door opening. Footsteps, the creak of the floorboard by the door, and then the door closing. Derek doesn’t have to look up to know who it is. After so long, he has become accustomed to the sounds of people coming and going.

He keeps his eyes on the wheel. “Scott’s not here,” he says.

“I know,” comes a quiet reply.

He looks up then, and sees Stiles hovering uncertainly in the doorway. He never waits at the door. Derek slows the potter’s wheel and says, “You can come in, if you want.”

Stiles nods and creeps in, like a little ghost. He’s gripping his elbows. Normally he exists as large as possible, like he thinks if he laughs loud enough and sprawls as wide as possible he can reach every crevice in the universe, but today he’s folded up, like a little origami bird.

There are a few seconds of silence before he says, “What are you making?”

“A vase.”

“Oh.”

There’s another pause. The only sounds are the gentle squeak of the potter wheel and the slick of hands against the clay. Derek says, “You want to make something?”

“Can I?”

“Clay’s over there. I need this finished by tonight.”

“Okay.”

Derek focuses back on his vase, but out of the corner of his eye he watches him. Stiles breaks off a small piece of clay from the bundle Derek’s got stacked up in the corner, next to Bess, and then collapses in a chair, rolling it between his long fingers. His eyes are focused, his lips pursed in concentration, but his leg is unable to keep still, jittering up and down. Derek has never seen him so subdued. His frenetic energy has never registered as anything other than excitement before. 

He wants to reach out, put a hand on his vibrating leg, ask what’s wrong. If he were a little more like Laura, like Scott, maybe he would.

But he’s not. So he just keeps an eye out; keeps working.

He doesn’t know how much time passes. In his peripheral, he can see the sharp line of tension in Stiles’s shoulders gradually dissipate, though never completely, and the way the waning light purples the shadows under his eyes. He wonders how much he has slept: it doesn’t look like a lot.

Finally, after what could be hours – long after the sky outside the window has gone black – Stiles inhales sharply.

“It’s my dad,” he says.

Derek looks up.

Stiles is still staring down at the clay. His voice is harsh, ragged, but his fingers are gentle, smoothing down any imperfections. Derek thinks it’s an animal of sorts. “He got shot.”

“What?”

“On the job. They had to do a drug bust.” He snorts wetly. “You wouldn’t think there’d be many drug rings in Beacon Hills. Our Economics teacher was our lacrosse coach in high school.” He exhales. “They got him in the leg. He’s in hospital.”

“Is he okay?”

“He got _shot_ , Derek.” But as soon as he’s said it, he skitters a little in reticence. “Sorry.”

Derek just watches him.

“Yeah, he’s... he’ll be okay. Melissa called me. That’s Scott’s mom, she works at the hospital. She just called me and told me, told me not to panic, told me the story, and then I went and visited him, but he was in surgery, so... I came here.”

“What about Scott?”

Stiles snorts, ugly. “He’s with his dad. He just swept in and took Scott away for a weekend before he left. I don’t like him. Scott doesn’t either but I think he just really badly wants a dad at all so he goes. My—my dad was his dad. Is his dad. More than his actual dad.” His voice cracks, and his fingers are trembling around the clay. “I—I already lost my mom, Derek, I can’t—”

He stops abruptly, biting his lip so hard Derek’s surprised he’s not drawing blood. His face is twitching, amber eyes huge and shiny. “I can’t lose my dad, too,” he whispers, and then again: “I can’t lose my dad.” Seemingly involuntarily, his hands clench into fists, but then he blinks and gasps and unclenches his hands, and, in his palm, his little clay animal has been crushed. “Oh, shit. Shit. _Fuck_ —”

He’s winding himself up into a panic. And Derek knows it’s not just about the dumb clay animal, it’s about his dad, but the one thing he knows he can fix is the clay animal. So he does.

“Hey,” he says, and stands up, coming over him. “Hey, it’s okay, we can fix it.”

“I broke it,” Stiles whispers. “I—I broke—”

“We can fix it,” Derek says, and crouches in front of him, balancing on the balls of his feet. “Hey. Stiles, look at me.”

Stiles wheezes for a long time, but finally he manages to look up. His eyes are wide and damp. Derek has to look away, instead fixes his gaze down at the animal in his hands. It’s mangled, but salvageable.

“Hey,” he says. “We can fix it.”

Stiles sniffs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Come on, I’ll help.”

He pulls him out of the chair and leads him to the trestle table in the middle of the room, and they both sit down opposite each other. Stiles cradles the little animal in his palms, like it’s real.

“What was it meant to be?”

“A rhino.”

“Okay.” Derek levers himself enough to reach for his water bottle on the side, and then sits back down. “Hold out your hands. You need to wet your fingers so the clay softens.”

Obediently, Stiles offers his hands out, and waters as Derek sprays his fingers with water, and then does his own. He shakes off the excess and reaches for the rhino. “Be gentle with it. The clay’s beginning to set so if you try move it a lot it’ll break. Watch.”

“Thanks, Derek,” Stiles says quietly.

Derek shrugs uncomfortably and looks down at the rhino so he doesn’t have to meet his earnest, damp gaze. “It’s okay.”

“I didn’t—really mean to barge in on you like this.”

“I don’t mind.”

He spares a glance upwards. Stiles straightens, a little. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s... I like being alone. But it’s nice to be—” He expels a breath, trying to find the words.

Softly, Stiles offers, “Be alone with someone?”

“Sort of. Yeah.” Derek likes that.

“I get that.” Stiles looks back down, as Derek’s fingers gently knead out the imprints of his knuckles in the clay. “Sometimes me and Scott do that. Just sort of exist with each other.”

Derek shapes one of the legs. “You and Scott are close.”

“Yeah. He’s—he’s been my best friend since we were, like, in diapers. I don’t really know what I’d do without him. We didn’t get into the same universities but they’re both close. I—I didn’t want to move away from my dad, you know?”

Derek nods. And then: “For—what it’s worth. Your dad’s a good man.”

“Yeah?”

“An ex-girlfriend tried to burn down our house when I was sixteen.”

“Fuck,” Stiles says. “That’s insane.”

“He was—really good about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s always been good with stuff like that,” Stiles says. When he glances up, he sees him twisting his wet fingers. “People. Keeping them calm. When... when Mom died, he kind of... kept us from falling apart. He drank, a bit. But never around me, always when I went to sleep. I’d find the bottles in the morning. And he never mentioned anything, but he made himself sober up. He doesn’t drink anymore. He’s... he’s the best person I know.”

And, in a split-second decision, Derek reaches forward and squeezes Stiles’s hand. “He’ll be okay.”

Stiles sniffs gratefully, and wipes his nose on his other sleeve. “Yeah.”

There’s a beat, and Derek realises he’s still holding his hand. Their fingers are wet, and quickly withdraws. He tries not to notice the traces of clay left on Stiles’s knuckles.

They’re quiet for a bit longer, just sitting with each other, before Stiles says, “Why pottery, anyway?”

Derek glances up. “What?”

“How did you get into pottery? It feels so... random.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, because that’s one of the nicer things that’s been said about his pottery. “I don’t know. It’s something.”

Stiles watches him.

Derek lifts a shoulder. “I like the idea of building things. Creating. And pottery was sort of just an option. I took it as an elective in high school, and just... enjoyed it. It’s peaceful. And no one really cares about it, so you don’t have to explain yourself. Just make a bowl.”

“It’s nice you and Laura do this together,” Stiles says.

“I guess. Laura kind of—pushed me into it.”

“Do you not like it?”

“No, I do. Just—without her, I wouldn’t have this store, you know.” He ducks his head a little, stares intently at the rhino. It stares facelessly back at him. “My uncle Peter – he sort of made fun of me a bit because of it. Thought I’d just keep it as a hobby. But Laura likes business and our other sister, Cora, she’s still in high school, and she likes sports, nothing much really to invest in, so Laura thought she’d invest in me.”

“And it paid off,” Stiles says.

“Yeah.”

“For what it’s worth,” Stiles says, “I think your pottery’s really cool.”

Derek snorts. “Okay.”

“No, seriously. I’m not creative at all. I just like putting puzzles together. I’m doing Criminology at university now. Taking after—after Dad. Thinking about maybe cracking the FBI. But this is—this is nice. And you’re really good at it.”

Almost subconsciously, they both turn to look at Scott’s mealworm in the window.

“Scott is—learning,” Derek says lamely.

“Scott is terrible,” Stiles says. “You’re awesome.”

Derek ducks his head so Stiles can’t see the small smile on his face. It’s not the first time he’s been complimented on his work – far from it – but for some reason it means the most.

They fall into a contented quiet for a few more minutes as Derek works. He smooths out the rhino’s flank, carefully shaping its horn, the four legs. He knows he should have given it back to Stiles a while ago, let him finish sculpting it, but in the thinning light Stiles’s eyes are molten amber and the selfish part of Derek wants to keep those eyes on him forever, so he doesn’t give the rhino back, and instead he keeps shaping it and shaping it and shaping it for as long as he dares, just so Stiles keeps looking at him like that.

But eventually, the rhino is done, and Derek can’t do anything more. He carefully cradles it in his hands, and then deposits it into Stiles’s. Stiles’s hands are warm and damp, rough at his fingertips and smooth at the smudges of clay, and they touch for the longest three seconds of Derek’s life.

And then he pulls away, and Stiles is looking at the rhino like it’s the best thing he’s ever seen.

“Derek,” he says. “This is amazing.”

“The horn’s not right.”

“I don’t care,” Stiles says. “Do we put it in the oven?”

“This clay dries. We just leave it.”

“Out of reach of Bess,” he says, decisively.

They put it on top of the cupboard. Stiles’s face is still pale but there’s a wan smile tugging at his lips. Derek decides it’s the only thing that matters.

And then—“Oh,” Stiles says. “Your vase.”

They look at Derek’s vase. Half-painted, on the table. Ready to be put in the kiln.

“You didn’t finish it,” Stiles says.

And Derek says, “That’s okay,” and finds that it is. He’ll come in early tomorrow. Tonight, for now, he is just glad he got Stiles to smile.

*

Stiles doesn’t come in for the next couple of days, and when Scott tries, with dark shadows under his eyes and for the first time a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, Laura shoos him away immediately. Scott protests exactly once, but he doesn’t need much convincing to turn back around and go home.

“I’ll make you a vase when I get back,” he promises her.

“You do that,” Laura says. She has taken to collecting Scott’s misshapen creatures like a parent hangs their children’s ugly drawings on the fridge. Derek has learned to accept that the windowsill in the kitchen is not something he can ever peacefully look at again as it slowly becomes more and more cluttered. Though that doesn’t mean he exercises as much caution as he should when opening the window behind them to let in a breeze several times a day.

“Can I take my vase in the window?” Scott asks. “I know it’s part of the display but I think John would like it.”

Derek doubts that, but he doesn’t say anything as Laura lifts it out of the window and deposits it into his arms. “You boys look after yourselves,” she says. “Are you eating?”

“I had a Hot Pocket for breakfast.”

Derek sees Laura actually die a little inside. She clears her throat. “Well,” she says. “Give Stiles and the Sheriff our best wishes.”

Scott smiles a little tiredly at her. “Thanks, Laura,” he says softly. “See you, Derek.”

“Take care,” Derek says.

Together, he and Laura stand there quietly as Scott nods at them, and then turns on his heel back through the door. As they watch his retreating back become smaller and smaller in the distance, Laura murmurs, “Poor boys.”

Derek thinks of Stiles’s wide, damp eyes. “I know.”

“A Hot Pocket,” she says. “Fuck me.”

“I want to make something for them,” Derek says. “The Stilinskis. To let them know that we’re thinking of them.”

Laura glances at him. “That would be nice.”

Derek purposely doesn’t meet her gaze. “I just... want to help.” He feels like he has stripped himself bare, exposed his skeleton to her. But Laura has always been gentle.

“We’ll do something together,” she says. “I don’t know. Cook them some actual food.” She shakes her head disgustedly, and then steps away from the counter, already pulling her phone out. “A _Hot Pocket_. Jesus Christ.”

Over the next few days, in the snatches of spare time he gets, Derek starts to carefully make the Stilinskis’ gift. Initially, he didn’t have much of a plan for what he was going to create, but as he absently threw clay down onto the wheel, an idea came to mind. It wouldn’t be not much – far from it – but he hopes it will at least alleviate the stress a little.

All the while, Stiles’s rhino stands staring at him facelessly from where he placed it on top of the cupboard. Oddly, it feels a little like Stiles is there with him, and it’s enough to keep him working well into most nights.

He knows Laura is the same. The morning Scott had left, Laura had stalked out the store, still muttering feverishly about the sodium content of a Hot Pocket, and returned many hours later laden with enough groceries to supply a small army. Dinner for them turns into something quick and simple: pot noodles, pasta, beans from a tin. All the while, their freezer slowly loads up with plastic tubs filled with lasagne, or bolognaise sauce, or vegetable pie. On the second day, the Stilinskis’ gift almost entirely completed, Derek opens the freezer for some ice for his swollen hands, and just seeing the stacks of food fills him with an immeasurable gratitude for Laura. He has always had a deep respect for her generosity, but seeing it tangibly like this, makes his heart swell.

By the third day, the gift has been finished and fired, and Laura has premade enough food that their freezer physically cannot stack anything more. They close the store that day, wrap the gift in a towel to prevent it from breaking, and precariously cram plastic grocery bags with all the Tupperware. Then they load into Derek’s car, and drive to the hospital.

It appears to be a relatively quiet day when they arrive, just a few people in the waiting room, and the hallways only filled with a faint murmur of voices. Still, the woman at the front desk looks frazzled, curly black hair sticking out of her ponytail, dark circles under her eyes, and when she sees them her smile is exhausted.

“Hello,” Laura says, “we’re here to see Sheriff Stilinski.”

Derek does not miss the woman’s shoulders sag a little at the name. She gently circles the computer mouse on the trackpad, and Derek sees the screen lighting up reflected in her pale face. “Name and relation?”

“Laura and Derek Hale. We know his son.”

The woman’s hand stills. “Hale?”

Laura nods.

For the first time, the woman’s tired smile comes off as genuine. “I’m Melissa. Scott’s mother. He works for you?”

No wonder she looks so exhausted. The Sheriff’s accident probably hit her directly, too.

Laura smiles at her. “Laura,” she says; juggles the shopping bags, and offers her hand across the desk. “Nice to meet you, Ms McCall. We were just stopping by to bring around some groceries for you and the Stilinskis.”

Melissa’s lips part, and her gaze drops to the bags in their hands. All at once, her eyes swim with tears. “For us? Oh, you really didn’t have to...”

“No offence, Ms McCall,” Laura says, “but we did. Anything to ease the load! Besides, I’m a co-owner of a pottery store. It’s not like I have many other pressing issues than helping the family of my top employee.”

Melissa’s eyes are still misty, but she snorts. “Honey, Scott is not your top employee.”

“Okay, maybe not in skill, but in heart. He’s a good boy, you should be very proud.”

Melissa huffs out a wet-sounding laugh. “You are very kind. And generous. Seriously, we can’t accept all this.”

“Sure you can. It would be going to waste if you didn’t, anyway, Derek’s entirely carnivorous, and most of this is vegetables.”

Derek glares at her. Laura smiles sweetly back at him.

Melissa evidently doesn’t believe a word she says, but she seems to appreciate at least the plausible deniability of it, because the harsh lines of her face soften. “Well, it _would_ do John some good to get some vegetables into him,” she admits. “Lord knows his diet would appreciate it.”

“Exactly,” Laura says, quite triumphantly. “Shall we leave them here?”

Melissa shakes her head. “No, you can go in. 67, down the hall. The boys will be happy to see you.” She must catch Derek’s disbelieving eyebrow raise, because she rolls her eyes fondly. “I know, right? You know, when I suggested Scott get a job I didn’t expect him to grow so attached that he’d miss not going in.”

“Pottery is bonding,” Laura says. “You look after yourself, Ms McCall.”

“Thanks, honey. You, too.”

They pick up the grocery bags and make their way to the Sheriff’s room.

The door is slightly ajar when they arrive, enough that Derek can hear Stiles’s voice through it, words coming out a mile a minute, as per usual. It makes Derek’s chest warm a little, knowing that he is feeling a little better. The last time they spoke, Stiles’s voice had been thin and tremulous: it makes him happy, to hear how he’s almost back to normal. Laura raps her knuckles against the door, and Stiles pauses briefly enough in the middle whatever long-winded story he was just spinning to call, “Come in!”

Since both their hands are full, Derek pushes it open with his shoulder, and they step inside. It’s a nice room: spacious, full of light. The last time Derek was in a hospital room was his Uncle Peter’s, which was decidedly less so. (He finds it hard to sympathise, mainly because he’s sure the nurses put him there on purpose as soon as he opened his mouth.) The Sheriff himself is lying on a bed, leg up in a sling. It has been many years since Derek last saw him, and the evidence of it shows on his face: the lines around his eyes are more pronounced, his hair grey around the temples, but his warm smile is just the same as Derek remembered: the same warm smile he used to see on Stiles’s face whenever he caught him looking at him with Bess. Stiles himself is on a chair next to the bed, but he’s practically draped over his father’s good leg as he emphatically continues with his story. On the chair next to him, Scott is fast asleep, head tilted so far back Derek just knows he’s going to wake up and feel it for the next several days.

Stiles is so involved in what he’s saying he doesn’t even register them coming in at first, not until the Sheriff shifts his gaze to them, and his softens into something like pleasant surprise. “If it isn’t the Hales,” he says, and Stiles’s head whips around at an alarming pace.

“ _Derek_?”

Just at the sound of his name, Scott jerks awake like he’s just had a firework launched in his ass. “Huh?” he says, and then his dazed gaze focuses on them. “Derek and Laura? What are you doing here?”

Laura lifts a shoulder modestly. “We just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing,” she says. She lifts one of the bags of the groceries. “We brought food.”

“Dude,” Scott says, already halfway out of his chair, “best bosses _ever_.”

The Sheriff laughs. “The legendary Derek and Laura,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Then he gives a significant look to Stiles, who flushes red all the way up to his hairline.

“Derek’s the one who taught me how to make pottery,” Scott says. “Derek, look, I gave him my first vase.”

Almost apprehensively, Derek’s gaze falls onto the mealworm, which is erected proudly on the Sheriff’s bedside table.

“It was most kind,” the Sheriff says, in the way one would use when they have been presented a mud pie.

"Anything for the Stilinskis,” Derek says, and Stiles’s wide mouth stretches into a grin.

“What food did you bring?” Scott pesters.

Laura steps further into the room and dumps the grocery bags onto the spare chairs, and starts unloading each of the Tupperware one at a time, explaining what is in them and how they should be prepared. Derek has already heard this lecture before, when Laura was dictating him what to write on the Post-it notes attached to the lid of each one, so he lets it drift to background noise, and instead just watches Stiles. Stiles, who looks so overwhelmed with gratitude that he can’t do anything except sit there speechlessly.

“Laura, this is too much,” the Sheriff says. “Really, we can’t accept this.”

“This is for the sake of my employee,” Laura tells him very seriously. “I cannot have Scott be eating Hot Pockets for breakfast. This is the least we could do. There should be enough for about two weeks here! We can pop by with some more once they all run out, you can just tell us which dishes you liked the most.”

The Sheriff simply blinks. Derek gets it, sort of. Laura on a mission is akin to a flash bomb being set off an inch away from your nose. “Thank you,” he manages, after a pause. He sounds overwhelmed, too. “I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”

Derek can’t help himself. “Guess it’s not unpaid child labour anymore,” he says to Stiles, and Stiles’s grin is so fucking pleased that Derek feels his ears go pink.

“Derek also brought something,” Laura prompts.

“Oh, right.” Derek bends down to unwrap the towel from around the gift he brought, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious now that all eyes are on him. “Um, it’s not much, but I just thought—”

“Derek,” Stiles says, “is that a _casserole dish_?”

Derek feels the back of his neck burn. “It’s oven-proof,” he mumbles. “I just... I thought that it might be handy because you can use it for most dishes, and Stiles mentioned you didn’t have one—”

“Stiles,” the Sheriff says, fondly exasperated.

“I wasn’t angling!” Stiles protests. “Honest!”

“I have learnt your definition of honest is incredibly flexible.”

Stiles splutters indignantly. The Sheriff rolls his eyes, and then turns his attention to Derek, holding out his hands to inspect it closer. Derek steps forward, carefully deposits it in his arms, slowly, because he can see that the Sheriff is still weak, and then steps back and twists his fingers anxiously behind his back, trying to gage a reaction.

“Derek,” the Sheriff says, after an extended pause, “this is beautiful.”

His relief is probably palpable to everyone. “Thank you.”

“I feel like I should pay you for this.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” Derek says. “It’s a gift.”

The Sheriff trails his fingers over it, in a move that is very like Stiles. He shoots Stiles a look, to which Stiles gives him a slightly guilty smile, and then looks back at Derek. “Thank you, son,” he says, softer. “This will be a big help.”

“Of course,” Derek says, suddenly feeling a little bashful.

Scott puffs out his chest. “Told you Derek’s super talented,” he says, like it’s his achievement, too. “I’m nearly as good though, aren’t I, John? Coming for your career, Derek.”

“Follow your dreams, man,” Stiles says.

“Thank you for stopping by,” the Sheriff tells Derek and Laura. “It’s very thoughtful of you to care so much.”

“Of course,” Laura says. “We should probably be getting back, though, we were gonna open the store back up after lunch.”

Both Scott and Stiles look dismayed at this news. “You can’t stay?” Stiles says. “But you need to tell Dad about Bess!”

The Sheriff visibly ages multiple years. “Christ, Stiles, tell me you didn’t give these poor people a chicken.”

“She is Derek’s best friend!”

The Sheriff doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. “Jesus,” he says. To Derek and Laura: “Please don’t feel obliged to leave, if you planned on sticking around a little. Unless you want to get away from this nightmare.”

“ _Nightmare_ ,” Stiles says, like this is wholly untrue. “Guess who’s only going to be eating tofurkey for Thanksgiving this year.”

“Sorry,” Derek says: and finds he actually is. “We can’t. I’ve got a meeting with a client in just under an hour. But... thank you for offering.”

“Enjoy the food,” Laura says. “Boys, you have my number. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Stiles stands. “I’ll walk you out.”

Derek definitely does not miss the way both Scott and the Sheriff wear matching smug expressions on their faces as Stiles walks around the bed to the door. He feels what is probably a requisite amount of apprehension.

Without the bags in his arms, Derek’s arms feel strangely empty, dangling uselessly by his side. He can’t hide his nerves now, so he shoves his hands in his pockets, hopes Stiles couldn’t see them shaking.

“Thank you for coming,” Stiles says, once they’re out the door. “This was... really nice of you guys.”

“Of course,” Laura says simply. She scruffs a hand through his hair. “Look after yourself, okay? Let us know if you or your dad have any allergies for the next time.”

Stiles smiles, overwhelmed. “Will do,” he says.

Laura glances at Derek. “I’ll start the car,” she says. “Don’t be long.”

And then she’s gone, and it’s just the two of them.

Without her as a buffer, Derek feels a little awkward. Stiles evidently does too, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the linoleum. Now that they are closer, without the distraction of Scott or the Sheriff or Scott’s mealworm, Derek can properly take Stiles in. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his face is pale, but the jitter of his leg doesn’t register as anxiety like it did the night in the workshop. No: Stiles seems more settled, almost – although there is something else today, something almost nervous.

“Thanks again,” he says.

“Yeah, of course,” Derek says. “It was the least we could do.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, not for today. I mean—yes, also for today, but—” He swallows audibly, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. It is far more distracting than it has any right to be. “I never thanked you, for the night I came to the store. Sorry for just—barging in and unloading on you. You were really nice about it.” He huffs out a self-deprecating laugh. “Pretty embarrassing, huh?”

“No, it was fine,” Derek says. “Really.”

Stiles risks him a glance through his eyelashes. “Yeah?”

Derek’s heart thumps. “Yeah. Of course. Anytime.”

Stiles’s head is still titled away, but Derek sees the pleased smile tugging at the edge of his lips, the way the tips of his ears go pink. Derek suddenly remembers the one last thing he brought.

“I, uh—” He clears his throat, and fumbles around in the bottom of the bag that held the casserole dish. “I brought you something.”

Stiles perks up. “For me? If it’s a key to your workshop, all you had to do was say that you’re done with restricting my creative talent—”

The words effectively die in his mouth when his eyes fall on the small, painted rhino in Derek’s hand, and his eyes go very, very wide.

Derek has never felt more exposed. “You left it behind,” he says, quietly. “I—I didn’t know if you wanted it back, or anything, but I—I painted it, in case you did.”

Carefully, Stiles lifts the rhino into his waiting palm. Its black eyes blink back at him gormlessly. Under the fluorescent hospital lights, its varnished grey coat glints almost white. It is not one of Derek’s pieces, not by a long shot, but Stiles is looking at it like it’s a fucking Monet, or something, in a way that makes Derek feel strangely naked.

“Derek,” is all he seems to be able to say.

“It’s not... great,” Derek says lamely. “Sorry.”

“It’s not...” Stiles breaks off frustratedly, and stares at him imploringly, dark eyes wide and amber under the lights. He tongues at his upper lip again, says, “Derek, you fucker—”

And then, before Derek can even blink, Stiles is stepping forward, slinging an arm around the back of his neck and pulling him into a kiss.

Thing is: Derek’s been kissed before. The only ones he can properly recall with clarity, that weren’t awkward prom-floor kisses or the one at a distant cousin’s bar mitzvah, were Kate’s. She would always kiss like she had something to prove, like she wanted Derek to feel every year in between them, kisses so hard Derek always remembers leaving with the taste of blood in his mouth. He used to think that’s what kissing was: something to prove. A fight.

Stiles kisses like he has all the time in the world. He tastes of something spiced, like gingersnaps, and he puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder like he’s trying to keep himself upright. Kate would always put hers around his neck. One of them stays curled in between their chests, the one gently cupping the rhino, and Derek can smell his shampoo and something sterile that’s always present in hospitals, and Laura is still waiting in the car and Scott and the Sheriff can probably see through the window in the door—

But it’s also one of the best kisses Derek has ever had.

Stiles pulls back. His eyes are shining, entirely unself-consciously: his hand stays on Derek’s shoulder, his body still tucked in close. He doesn’t step away like Derek expects. Derek finds he doesn’t either.

“You are the most insufferable thing I’ve ever met,” Derek breathes.

“You painted my rhino,” Stiles says.

“It was sitting there.”

Stiles grins. This close, Derek can count his eyelashes. His mouth is pink and wet. Derek wants to touch it: dazedly, thinks he’d probably let me. “I think you’re just a secret romantic,” he says. He nudges the back of his knuckles against Derek’s chest, like it’s a door he wants to get through. Like he’s asking for permission to crack it open and hold his heart. If it’s as gently as he’s cradling the rhino, like it’s something priceless, Derek would let him in a heartbeat. “Who would’ve thought, huh? Murder-brows turned sap.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re already said that.”

Derek kisses him again: and again, and again. Stiles laughs delightedly into his mouth.

“Admit it,” he crows triumphantly, “admit that I fucking _rule_.”

“You got me a fucking chicken.”

Stiles fucking _sighs_. Like a Disney princess. “I should’ve known,” he says. “We’ve been co-parenting her for too long for it to be anything other than unbearably homoerotic.”

“Do you hear yourself sometimes?”

“Admit it,” Stiles says, close against his mouth. Eyelashes, skin, freckles. Derek’s hands instinctively go for his ribs, his fragile, gentle ribs, filled with life. He is alive and warm in his hands. “Go on. Admit that I fucking rule, and you like me. Come on.”

Derek bumps their foreheads together. Stiles keens like a cat. In the space between their mouths he feels like he could do anything. It’s what makes him brave. “I think I more than like you,” he breathes.

 _Too soon_ , Kate would said.

But Stiles’s grin could light up the fucking moon.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed! let me know what you thought :-]


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